Richard Whately Quotes

I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.

Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

Our capacity for belief is so plastic, we can convince ourselves of anything. Believing is seeing.

For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true

When did ignorance become a point of view?

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

It's very difficult to lie to yourself about certain things. I'm not necessarily convinced about how information is gathered and I don't think the credence that's given to it is valid.

Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?

Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

There's no such thing as 'facts of life'. Only standing theories that haven't been disproved as of yet.

I don't question things that go against what I believe very much. But boy, the stuff that I really want to believe, I really question a lot.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

People believe what they want to believe.